Fake headline of the day: The Pirate Bay “moves” to North Korea

Blog post by "Kim Jung-Bay" claims the site moved to North Korea. It hasn't.

Has the notorious piracy website The Pirate Bay truly fled to the country most inhospitable to Internet users of all kinds—North Korea? That's what the Pirate Bay site was saying today, complete with a re-worked ship logo that proudly displayed the colors of North Korea. A blog post on TPB's blog said the site has been offered "virtual asylum" by the regime of Kim Jong-Un and has taken it up on it.

If it seems wildly implausible, it is. And if this all sounds like a joke you've heard before, well, you have. The same website made the same joke back in 2007 on April Fool's Day. Apparently in 2013, they couldn't quite wait until April 1. Or maybe they were just so excited by today's news of North Korea weirdly playing host to NBA star Dennis Rodman that they decided to get this year's DPRK humor going a little early.

This much is true: the Pirate Bay has been on the move lately. It recently had to move its hosting services out of Sweden and then was apparently booted from Norway after that nation's Pirate Party couldn't stand up to pressure being applied by copyright owners.

Today TPB posted the North Korea announcement under the moniker "Kim Jung-Bay," revealing that the site was "invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network." (The post clearly is describing North Korea but incorrectly calls it the "Republic of Korea," which is actually the formal name of South Korea.) Kim Jung-Bay continues:

This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.

Tracing the site's IP address with a tracking utility does show the traffic routes through a North Korea IP address. But routing can be spoofed or hacked fairly easily. Some users on Hacker News have observed that the site speeds continue to correspond to a site hosted somewhere in Europe, not in North Korea. Another hacker by the moniker Will originally suggested TPB was actually somewhere near Cambodia, but he has now written a more extensive follow-up agreeing with the European hypothesis.

Tom Paseka, an engineer at Web security company CloudFlare, confirmed to Ars that The Pirate Bay announcement is "almost certainly" a fake. Border Gateway Protocol is used to make routing decisions about how to move Internet traffic, and it's based on a "trust model" that makes it relatively simple to insert a bogus "autonomous system" or AS number into the route.

"In this case, they've dropped AS131279, the North Korean backbone's network number, into the mix," Paseka said in an e-mail to Ars. "The routing is inconsistent with how AS131279 does their routing—they usually route via China Unicom, AS4837. The Pirate Bay's prefixes are not routed via this path."

The story has been taken quiteseriously in some places. However, Swedish Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge has come to see it as a hoax, as he told Foreign Policy a few hours ago.

“We’ve been in talks with them for about two weeks, since they opened access for foreigners to use 3G in the country,” a Pirate Bay insider told us. “TPB has been invited just like Eric Schmidt and Dennis Rodman. We’ve declined up until now.”

So, stay tuned for pics of Frederik Neij sipping cognac with Rodman and Kim Jong-Un. They might be released sometime in early April.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Treason against who exactly? Who is at war with North Korea?

Technically? The US and South Korea. Peace was never actually declared, it's been a long (*long*) armistice. There was never an actual peace treaty established (although you could also say the US was never technically "at war" as such in the first place, but for practical purposes it was).

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Treason against who exactly? Who is at war with North Korea?

Officially the North and the South/UN are still at war - the conflict ended with a cease fire only.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Treason against who exactly? Who is at war with North Korea?

Technically? The US and South Korea. Peace was never actually declared, it's been a long (*long*) armistice. There was never an actual peace treaty established (although you could also say the US was never technically "at war" as such in the first place, but for practical purposes it was).

Using the same logic you'd have to say "for practical purposes" we are not at war with North Korea.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Treason against who exactly? Who is at war with North Korea?

Technically? The US and South Korea. Peace was never actually declared, it's been a long (*long*) armistice. There was never an actual peace treaty established (although you could also say the US was never technically "at war" as such in the first place, but for practical purposes it was).

Excellent answer.

The original post I replied to was about the Pirate Bay, and they're hosted in neither South Korea nor the USA, and so any talk of treason is nonsensical. But yes, there are some nations still at war with North Korea.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Treason against who exactly? Who is at war with North Korea?

Actually, the definition of treason does not require a state of war. It only requires aiding a foreign power, in a manner that is contrary to your own country's interests.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

Treason against who exactly? Who is at war with North Korea?

Actually, the definition of treason does not require a state of war. It only requires aiding a foreign power, in a manner that is contrary to your own country's interests.

That depends on where you live. In the USA, you can only commit treason in the context of war:

Article III, Section 3, US Constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. "

The USA has Enemies in the context of a war. In all other circumstances, it is impossible to define Enemies and thus impossible to prove the charge.

Koreans have a true once in a century opportunity to troll the whole world by actually offering tpb asylum!

I wonder if that could be considered a form of treason, essentially taking up ranks with the enemy (although not taking up arms). If anyone could be argued to be an enemy these days, its the DPRK. Something about threatening to nuke us every other week and all.

This is somewhat off-topic, but If anyone cares to know, the Korean War (1950-06-25 ~ 1953-07-27) "ended" with an armistice signed by the U.N. (represented by U.S. Army), China, and North Korea.

South Korea never signed it because it didn't want to end the war unfinished (the armistice line wasn't much different from the 38th Parallel that originally divided the two Koreas), and wished that any burden that happens after the armistice be taken upon by the United States, which was basically heading the allied U.N. force.

North Korea, however, uses the missing signature to claim that South Korea isn't a legitimate government. It's also why, to this day, most of the aggressive postures are made towards United States, and wants bilateral talks with U.S. for any untangling of the unholy mess that is the aftermath of the Korean War. In the official view of the North, South Korea doesn't exist - it's merely a puppet government set up by the United States to prevent true unification of the peninsula.

OTOH, South Korea doesn't officially recognize North Korea either - it views it largely as an regime that illegally occupies what's rightfully South Korean land. This leads to some... interesting consequences.

There's the "official" version of the map of the northern region currently ruled by North Korea, complete with how South Korea allocates the provinces and cities and all. There are actual gubernatorial offices and officials for these regions in South Korea, too, even though no actual political power can be exercised there.

Then there's the "actual" version of the map, which shows how North Korea really allocates them. Both versions of the map are shown in school textbooks, although the "official" version takes precedence. I wouldn't be surprised if North Korea is doing something similar.

BTW, if PirateBay actually gets to be in cahoots with North Korea, a South Korean attempting to access the site can technically be arrested under the National Security Act once the government is made aware of the fact - it would be treated similar to committing treason. As far as South Koreans are concerned, the move had the potential to unwittingly make a whole bunch of people criminals even before downloading a torrent file.

It's an interesting thing to ponder, now that I think about it.

Of course, there are some... mitigating factors. Currently, websites that are truly affiliated with North Korea are censored by default in South Korea. Attempting to access them will automatically redirect to the boilerplate warning page here: http://warning.or.kr/ . If you ignore the warning and circumvent, only then you're in a legally precarious territory.

But obviously, there will be some 'lag' between the move and the implementation of the censor, if it happens. Since the site already has reputation for facilitating copyright infringement, the government could do a double-smackdown of the people connecting to it during that gap. A pirate that's also a traitor? Hmm. I can foresee some wild "discussions" at Korean message boards if this happens. (Un)fortunately, we'll probably never see this play out, ever.

Either way, this was picked up by media organizations and blogs all over the internet bringing... MORE fame and fortune to TPB

Well played!

While the MAFIAA may rule the courts with their bought judges, vice presidents and scummy lawyers... they are dying the death of a thousand cuts when it comes to public image against TPB.Funnier still as the MAFIAA control most of the "legit" media outlets.

I'm divided on this. One side of me thinks that hosting TPB in NK is a great idea, as they'd be untouchable. It's well known that the Norks are looking for ways to tweak the rest of the world, and pretty much everyone would agree that hosting a peer-to-peer site (even if they do facilitate copyright infringement on a global scale) is far better than building nuclear weapons and missiles with which to deliver them. The US reaction (and particularly that of the media companies) would be worth seeing.

The other side of me doesn't want anything to do with the regime in North Korea. Any government that micromanages its citizens down to telling them where to wear the button with the picture of their leader and which haircuts are permissible, deserves no support from us. Seriously, the ruling elite of North Korea are not nice people. Whatever you think is wrong with the US (and I don't deny there's plenty), at least our population isn't starving (we may eat too much junk food, but that's our personal decision).

The Pirate Bay also claimed that they would be broadcasting their website from low orbit satelites, right?

I've been taking their words with a grain of salt ever since. But what if both were true? Maybe North Korea's "nuclear tests" were just rocket tests to launch Pirate Bay satelites! OMG, this is srs business, people. Srsly.